NPPA Board Of Directors Considers Restructuring, Examines Next Budget
LOUISVILLE, KY (May 28, 2008) – During the first day of their annual two-day board of directors meeting, the National Press Photographers Associations directors, executive committee, and staff today reviewed the organization's new three-year strategic plan, the upcoming fiscal year's budget, and this year's proposed resolutions – including two resolutions that call for a drastic restructuring of the board itself.
"We need outside expertise," NPPA national treasurer Jim Sulley told the board. "We're all really good at our craft and at our profession, but our craft and our profession isn't running a non-profit organization - it's photojournalism. If you can bring to the table the the option of bringing in outside expertise, these are people who are successful at running organizations, running businesses. Look at the board of General Motors, or Wal-Mart ... this [bringing in outside board members] would allow us to do better."
Since its earliest days, NPPA's board of directors has been based on a geographical plan that divided the States, and territories outside the domestic mainland, into Regions. Originally it was a smaller number of Regions, which were later expanded to today's current 11 Regions. Each Region has been represented by a Director and Associate Director who is an NPPA member who was elected by that Region's members.
After much discussion about the make-up of the boards of other non-profit organizations, and the role that non-journalist business and non-profit organization leaders might play as members of NPPA's board, Region 3 director Tom Costello made a motion to send the two board restructuring resolutions to a governance task force, or a committee, for discussion and for more consideration. Costello said this should only be done if the group has a short deadline to report back to the board, so that any action on the resolutions doesn't drag on without steps being taken soon.
The board responded by voting to send the two resolutions to a governance task force appointed by NPPA president Tony Overman. The group will have a three month deadline to report back to the board with a written report, and within 30 days after the report is issued the board will meet on the topic in a special phone-conference call and take some action based on the findings.
One idea the governance task force was asked to consider is a "hybrid" board, one made up of some elected Regional officers as well as some outside, appointed experts.
At the time of NPPA's founding the Regional plan was established so that Board members, the Regional officers, had equal representation and their voting powers on board matters were based on the number of members in each Region, NPPA Life Member Joe Young told the board today.
Active in NPPA for several decades, Young served on the board years ago after he first joined NPPA in 1958. Young told the board that back then a Regional director on the board might have one vote for every 20 members in their Region, as an example, so that a board member from a densely-populated Region would have more voting power than a Director who represented a less-populated area.
The resolution to change the historical structure of NPPA's board has as its foundation the premise that the current governance structure does not reflect the changes that have taken place in visual communications and the advancement of digital media. The resolutions also point out that historically NPPA members have failed to vote in Regional elections (some elections have had as few as 10 members casting ballots).
But the spirit of the resolutions are that the current Regional structure of picking a board based on a geographical plan may not bring to the board the most qualified candidates who represent the various (and new and emerging) specialties within visual journalism, along with much-needed business expertise.
Photojournalism, and visual journalism in new media, are rapidly changing and some of NPPA's leadership believe there there may be growing niche specialties in visual journalism – outside of still photography and video photojournalism – that may not be fully represented in the board's demographics but should be included.
Currently the majority of the board members are still or television photojournalists along with a few college educators. Additionally, there are no board members from outside the profession – and traditionally non-profit educational organizations like NPPA have a board that includes members from various businesses outside of the organization's area of expertise.
In other business today, the board went into executive session to hear the annual report from News Photographer magazine and then spent the rest of the day discussing NPPA's proposed $1.5 million budget for the upcoming fiscal year 2008-2009. The board then adjourned for the night, and will resume discussing the budget on Thursday morning during an open session that will also include the remainder of this year's proposed resolutions along with the election of the next set of national officers for the executive committee.
Down the hall from the board meeting, NPPA's Multimedia Immersion workshop continued all day and well into the night. At 11 p.m. EST tonight, all seats at the workshop were filled by participants who are uploading and editing the video they shot while out on assignment today. Instructors and coaches, circulating through the rows, helped photojournalists who are learning the new tools of multimedia storytelling deal with the steep learning curve - and anxiety - that comes with learning an entirely new set of digital skills.
"As I shot my story tonight I had to think about all of the pieces - the images, the audio, the elements - and I'm already thinking about what more I need if I could go back tomorrow, the pieces that I'm missing, as I put the pieces together in my head," photojournalist and Ohio University photojournalism instructor Pete Souza said. "I haven't even downloaded what I shot tonight yet, but I'm thinking about what I've got and how I can use that to build a story, even though there are some pieces missing."
Thinking about the whole package, all at once, is a big hurdle for some photojournalists to overcome, shooters who may be accustomed to a career of singularly concentrating on capturing "the moment" in a still images, versus multimedia's sequenced multiple moments that can be images, or sound, or a combination of the two.
Crunching on a lollipop as the session went deep into the night, wearing headphones to listen to the audio, multimedia and photography editor Sarah Polger of National Geographic's Digital Media sat staring at her MacBook Pro laptop while editing video in Final Cut Pro after shooting video today for the first time.
"I loved it," she said. "The versatility that video is going to give me in the field is what draws me to this."
See what the Multimedia Immersion workshop participants are creating by taking a look at www.multimediaimmersion.org.
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